Remember when the Coen Brothers actually made comedies that were funny? After 2000’s O Brother Where Art Thou? they seemed to lose the touch they had with odd concept broad comedies, directing big misfires like “Intolerable Cruelty,” “The Ladykillers” and even last year’s forgettable Burn After Reading.
But things are looking up, as last night the trailer for the Coen’s latest hit the web and it looks fantastic. “A Serious Man” is a highly personal (though not autobiographical) film for the Coens, drawing on their experiences attending Hebrew school, and being the children of Jewish academics. Set in 1967, the plot revolves around Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) a middle aged physics professor who has just learned his wife is leaving him for another man, finds his tenure is being questioned, has his brother living on his couch, and whose children are getting into drugs and plastic surgery. In order to deal with these issues, Larry seeks advice from three rabbis and encounters difficulty along the way. The film was shot in Bloomington, Minnesota, and it marked the tenth time the Coens have worked with longtime cinematographer, Roger Deakins.
The cast is made of largely unknown or non-professional actors (thank God, we’ve had just about enough of George Clooney pretending he’s Cary Grant). An early report on the film also mentioned that they were filming a sequence entirely in Yiddish, focusing on Jewish wedding customs and superstitions, but there is no word yet on whether it has made the final cut.
With such a complex plot, the trailer itself is curiously enigmatic revealing only that the lead character’s wife is leaving him and that his teaching position is being threatened. It seems a little odd that Focus Features is selling a film with no star power this way, but with the lengthy scroll near the end of the Coen’s previous films, I guess they are still trying to snare anyone who may have seen or heard about any one of the movies by these guys at some point in their life despite the boldly non-traditional, repetitive trailer. That said, what is in the trailer looks like something more observationally funny like “Fargo,” rather than their broad comedies of late. The set design looks particularly gorgeous and big, big points to whoever decided to soundtrack the trailer to Larry’s head being smacked against a blackboard.
The film will play the Toronto International Film Festival and opens on October 2.